"Poor Quentin," she added, faintly.
"Read it!" said Rohallion, impetuously.
"'We regret to have to add, it is feared that after accomplishing this valuable public service with the guerilla, our enterprising young soldier has fallen a sacrifice to his zeal, or the lawless state of the country, as—as he has not been heard of since.'" .....
Flora's sweet voice died away almost in a tremulous whisper as she read this blighting paragraph, which Lord Rohallion, after hastily snatching the paper from her, read again and again, with his brows deeply knit.
It did not fall upon him with the crushing effect it had upon the two ladies, who sat silently weeping, for the words of the paragraph were, to them, terribly suggestive and vague; and now the old quartermaster, who had been noisily summoned by his veteran comrade the valet, arrived to join the conclave; and truly, had a thirteen-inch bombshell, shot from a mortar of similar diameter, exploded among the breakfast equipage, worthy John Girvan could not have seemed more astonished and bewildered than he did by the whole affair.
Lord Rohallion and he, as old soldiers, endeavoured to explain the matter away, and to speak from past experience of many instances of men reported as "missing" who always turned up again; newspaper paragraphs in general they treated with great contempt, and expressed their certain conviction that "by this time," no doubt, he had rejoined the corps.
Indeed, so certain were they of this that Lord Rohallion desired the quartermaster to write at once; Flora, with charming frankness, offered to enclose a tiny note, and the old general wrote at once by the next mail to the Horse Guards, urging "the immediate promotion of his young friend to the first ensigncy at the disposal of His Royal Highness the Field Marshal Commanding-in-Chief—in the 25th Foot, if practicable."
This done, the male part of the household, though full of the affair, and their innumerable yarns of the corps, which it had called to memory, felt more composed on the subject. The quartermaster furbished up his old red coat, and remained to dinner: Flora's engagement to ride with young Fernwoodlee and the meet at Kilhenzie, were committed to oblivion, and were utterly forgotten, as she sat alone, full of thought, on the old mossgrown garden-seat, with the autumn leaves whirling round her.
Through the branches of the stripped trees on which the rooks were cawing, the sunlight fell aslant upon the copper gnomon of the ancient sun and moon dial, which occupied the centre of the quaint Scoto-French garden, and round the pedestal of which Quentin, to please her, during the last spring, had trained a creeping plant.
The plant was still there, but its tendrils and trailers were dead, withered, and yellow, and sadly Flora felt in her heart that she was lonely, and that Rohallion was now a broken home—broken, indeed, as if Death himself had been there!